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Chinese Astronauts Complete First Spacewalk
As_I_Please writes "At 8:40AM (GMT) this morning, Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang successfully spent 18 minutes in a tethered spacewalk outside the spacecraft Shenzhou 7. This is an important step in China's goal of building an orbiting space station and sending astronauts to the moon."
This announcement brought to you by the freedom-loving Chinese Press at 7:20am.
See, I don't mind being skeptical. What I don't understand is this blind of some countries, and unbridled skepticism of others.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I read about this last week on an English language Chinese news website.
Your skepticism is likely well placed. These are the same people who posted details about the launch hours before the actual launch took place:
http://gizmodo.com/5054776/china-launch-success-hits-web-hours-before-actual-blast+off
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Oh, I don't blindly trust any countries government. Rather, I trust any countries government to say only what makes them look best, true or not.
More importantly, because just recently, China announced the exactly same story http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/25/2145209 *before* they had even *launched*...
Well.
Just as it's not good to discount /everything/ that some countries announce, sometimes the skepticism is well earned.
Why are all posts so anti-chinese?
I love democracy and I live in a liberal western democratic country (Sweden), but I do not at all understand why all posts have to be so negative.
Lets critisize china when they do something bad. When they do something good like this, lets congratulate them! This is a great step forward, not only for china, but for all of humankind.
I honestly believe that China will be the space super-power during the 21st century and the faster they get there the better for ALL OF US - EVEN AMERICANS!
So lets just cheer and celebrate this success! Congratulate the astronauts and engineers that made this possible. It is impressive and it is a fantastic work no matter if you are a russian, american or chinese.
Hopefully China will make a real push for space forcing the US to get off its arse in regard to the final frontier...
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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The point is that they are building their space program. You have to consider Asian, and especially East Asian thinking. They aren't like the west with its "profit immediately or forget about it" thinking. When I see China putting men into space (the third country to do so after Soviet Russia and then the USA) and now doing space walks, that means they already have a long term plan to set up semi-permanent if not permanent colonies in orbit or on other celestial bodies.
See, they are not in a space race. They are doing this for their more distant future. When they do something like this, they aren't thinking of the next quarter's profits or even the next year's. They are thinking in terms of the next generation or the generation after.
And, I applaud them for it. It is nice to see homo sapiens thinking long term about getting off this pale blue dot of ours, and not only thinking about it but taking active steps towards such a goal. I couldn't care less what language they are speaking or what country they are from. They are humans and they are making the effort that others seem to have given up on. Power to them.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
China is sending men into space. We are scrapping our only way of getting into space. Talk about progress...
I don't think it's that unusual for a press agency to write about events before they happen. They're expected to put out a release almost immediately to various wires (like AP), or they'll get scooped by other reporters and bloggers.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest that they wrote the release as I would expect, and it somehow got out before it should have.
You can also bet that both of our US Presidential candidates are already working on their acceptance speeches, and will have them completed days before the election even takes place. I'm sure their campaigns' press releases already have quotes in them, too.
-David
Yeah, like theres never been a press report of a major event that hasn't gone out accidentally before time? Like, say, the BBC News report of Building 7 collapsing several minutes before it actually did.....
It was a fuckup, nothing more imho.
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/09/27/chinas-first-spacewalk-a-success-video/
"Zhai lifted himself through the hatch and waved at the camera attached to the service module on the outside of the craft, with Earth looming overhead."
"He then tried to take off the helmet for a 'nicer portrait shot'."
(After the implosion of his body, another astronaut from the 344 person manned spacecraft was sent to replace him.)
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Chinese astronaut Zhang Ziyi successfully spent 18 minutes in a tethered spacewalk outside the spacecraft Shenzhou 7.
My first thought, "that's pretty dangerous, in every movie she's been in, her clothes are ripped off suddenly and forcefully."
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i would have agreed with you when i first read that article yesterday, but i couldn't understand why the Chinese government would lie about a launch that they already spent so much time and money preparing for, and were clearly going to carry out.
it wasn't until some other slashdotters remarked that this could have simply been a prepped news story, which is a common practice in mainstream media, and that the transcripts were probably holder text--still a bad idea i think, but at least understandable.
and it should be noted that this time there was live video footage. and it would be a pretty stupid thing to try to fake a space mission. i mean, cheating in the olympics, or any other sports, is something that you can get away with (and i have no doubt that plenty of countries have gotten away with on many occasions), but faking a space mission is more along the lines of lying about achieving cold fusion. there's just simply no way you can deceive people about that for more than a few weeks or months at most. so unless they plan on being ridiculed by the world later, it would be a very stupid thing to do.
I think it's something about announcing launches, with detailed transcripts of conversations, before they happen.
If I am remembering correctly a news outlet in China published "accidentally," the story with a conversation transcript. While it is possible that that was exactly what was going to be published following the launch/spacewalk it could well have been a "template" for the real story to be published after the launch. China likes to script and practice things with meticulous detail prior to the actual "public" event. They're trying to prove to the world and themselves that they are worthy of attention as a global powerhouse and it starts for them by putting their best foot forward. They don't want mistakes and/or embarassments and this is their way of mitigating it.
These folks have done in 10 years what has taken over 100 in the US in terms of industrialization and economics. Cut them a bit of slack... I'm grateful to the Chinese for their pursuit of space exploration. It provides healthy competition that has been lacking since the fall of the USSR. It may well be what is needed to get the money flowing back into NASA and instead of the likes of Blackwater and DoD more generally. Even if there's a bit of exageration--which may or may not be the case--it isn't as if we weren't doing the same thing to the Russians with our own space program.
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Riiiiight. Because putting melamine in milk powder and antifreeze in toothpaste isn't about immediate profits, it's a long-term strategy for building a trusted brand.
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Just try not to kill everyone on the planet when you do it, mmmkay?
The Bush administration did fake the Iraq war to scare Americans into voting Democratic. I am so sick of these liberal ploys to take over the white house.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
china faked a spacewalk and the US faked a moonlanding, US still ahead
Nothing to see here...
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity!
To clarify (and agree), the fireworks depicted during the opening ceremony did in fact go off as shown. The actual footage everyone saw, unless they were in Beijing, was a computer-rendered simulation of the same fireworks. The reason they were animated for broadcast is that the shot shown of the fireworks would have been at best difficult and dangerous, and at worst impossible, to do for real and live. I don't really see the big deal for this; it's basically some special effects showing an angle that couldn't otherwise be shown. It's like all the news networks doing a story about West Bumfuck, Iowa, and using Google Earth to do a fairly nifty zoom-in-from-orbit effect because that obviously can't be done for real. But nobody screams at CNN for that. Of course, that being said, I don't exactly give China the benefit of the doubt for things they have a real motive to lie about, like space missions.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
And because of how much China exports these corrupt business practices affect the health of people outside their borders.
I for one try, as much as possible, to avoid any products that come from China because I have no idea what I'm getting.
You know what. China is serving global demand. Global business demands profit at all and any cost. Consumers don't care who sewed their shirts, that those people despite working hard can't afford healthcare and education.
They say "don't care was made to care". Well the developed nations have sown the seed of their contempt for the humanity of the people of those manufacturing nations by not caring except about price. Now we're beginning to reap what we have sown.
You've all heard of companies using child/slave labour. Clothing manufacturers, computer makers. Much of the worlds chocolate supplies are tainted with slavery #1 ... none of these companies go out of business.
But now our constant drive for the bottom line is affecting the health of our home nations, now will we sit up and say no to globalised exploitation?
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#1 about 50% of cocoa comes from West Africa (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali) where child slavery (abduction of children to work for no money) was considered widespread in 2001/2002. I have never seen any reports of a solution to this problem. See eg, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1963617.stm http://www.365act.com/actions/2.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/apr/19/globalisation.benstafford;
Other sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_exploitation_in_the_chocolate_industry particularly http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/24/news/international/chocolate_bittersweet.fortune/ (read that one if nothing else).
"These folks have done in 10 years what has taken over 100 in the US in terms of industrialization and economics."
They bought a capsule design from Russia (and modified it to their needs) and then designed their own EVA suit. I think from 1959-1969 we pulled off a bit more than that.
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Oh, and it's actually not a space walk. He actually use his hands to hold the handles on the ship to move towards the target. So it's really not a walk at all.
i think most people recognize that. it's a pretty ethnocentric attitude to think that only the U.S. can conduct legitimate space research and everything China does must have an ulterior motive behind it. of course, if you see China as the enemy, then you can't concede to the fact that they might be genuinely interested in space exploration or recognize any achievements by the Chinese people.
it's really saying that we can be proud of our own space program, but China can't be proud of theirs. frankly, i think the more countries venture into space, the closer humanity as a whole gets to the possibility of space colonization. so who cares what flag is sewn onto their uniform? the are far worse things to spend time and resources on than space exploration.
I am seeing a lot of uninformed, and often racist, sentiment regarding this. Here are the facts.
1. This is not a Russian capsule. The three module shape is dictated by the principles of capsule design in general, not by China simply buying a set of blueprints
2. They are not moving that slowly, they are simply being economical with the number of missions they fly. It took Russia and the US 4 years to get from men in space to spacewalks, it has taken China 5 years.
3. Their spending money on this whilst there are *gasp* still poor people on China is not something that can be criticised from a country bailing out wall street whilst letting the poor rot. At least Chinese people will eventually benefit from space technology. Who will benefit from bankers being insulated from the consequences of their actions? Everywhere has inequality. No reason to crucify China specifically for it.
4. Shenzhou is the most technologically advanced manned spacecraft flying. The Shuttle has more capability but it is nearing the end of its life and when it retires, Americans better get used to play to second fiddle to China for a while.
5. Being racist makes you a dick. Chinese people are just as capable of this as you are.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Space travel is pretty old. All it really takes now is good engineering, and a lot of money. China may still be stifling innovation with central planning, but it is a lot better than the USSR in the days of Sputnik and Yuri Gargarin. If China says they can send a man into space, I really don't care to doubt them. The zero-carbon city they are building is a lot more interesting.
But then again they didn't have to invent industrialization first, they could buy industrial stuff from many suppliers. It's a bit like flying from Spain to the US and saying you're better than the discoverers because it was faster.
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